


pancakes and punches

by translevi



Series: love at first broken bone [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fist Fights, Levi-centric (Shingeki no Kyojin), Minor Violence, Trans Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), annie is a meme, annie plays pokemon go, ihop trips, love at first broken bone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 04:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8696644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/translevi/pseuds/translevi
Summary: The nurses look like they might be about to kill them. Levi doesn’t stop drinking his sweet tea, shaking slightly in his non-dominant hand. Annie holds the bloody tissue on her nose out of the way as she gulps down Dr. Pepper, washing away the taste of her second chocolate bar.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i have 2 fics i need to update and i did this instead

The titans are gone now. Just about everything from that life is. He has seen glimpses of others, subordinates long past alive and well in this world. He finds his friends, he finds his squad, he finds everyone he has lost; and they start over.

Gone are the cold memories of empty chairs at empty tables, gone is the hollow look in their eyes that remained as death stole their lives away. Petra bickers with Auruo, Erd and Gunther watch their squabbling; Isabel still tackles him, Farlan still grins. Erwin has remained with a fond and sometimes reminiscent look in his eyes; Mike still sniffs him, Hanji still gives him a headache with their screams.

Then he finds her.

She wasn’t even doing anything, just leaning against the brick wall smoking, watching the people around her. Let bygones be bygones, he reasons, let the murder of his squad and hundreds of others stay in a past life. His hand curls into a fist and his legs carry him before his mind gives them permission.

Her cold gaze finds him and the flicker of realization is all he sees before his fist makes contact with her jaw. Her eyes are wide, cigarette smoking on the ground, staring towards the direction her head had been snapped in. Slowly she rolls her jaw in her mouth, rubbing her tongue against a bloody spot in her mouth where teeth had met flesh. Her muscles tense as she turns to glare back, cold stare meeting the heat of his own.

Her hand balls into a fist.

\----

They spend that night in the hospital, ice on their black eyes as a doctor sets Levi’s broken knuckles and the nurse finishes wrapping Annie’s broken toe.

Who breaks a fucking toe.

The ache in his cheek from where she had kicked him reminds him of exactly how someone breaks a toe.

It’s fair. They’re not even, but it’s fair.

Then the doctors leave them. They haven’t been discharged yet so there’s nowhere to go. He is stuck in here with her. He ignores her for the most part, ignores the way her gaze flickers to him, ignores her when she brings out her phone.

Ignores her until she growls out a noise.

When he looks at her again she is staring at her phone with the same burning intensity in her eyes that she had when they were fighting. Now she is down to her last pokeball and glaring at an eevee as if it had personally offended her and her entire lineage.

“Team Valor.”

It’s not a question, and for the life of him he cannot figure out why he decided to say it, but Annie’s eyes meet his own and she gives the faintest of nods before dipping back to her game.

He reaches over and yanks the phone out of her hand, ignoring the hot flash of anger and the way he hands turn to claws before he hits the option to run from the battle, leaving the eevee behind.

He saves his number in her phone as “asshole”

 

When she texts him the next morning after they’ve been discharged from the hospital at 3:23 am, he saves her number as “ice bitch”

\----

He asks her why two weeks later, when they’re back in the hospital and her nose and crooked and bleeding from where he broke it. He can’t feel his fingers.

“Childhood trauma is fun.” Her voice is blank, if slightly nasally.

“Yeah.” He agrees, staring towards the door to their room. The clock ticking echoes and unnerves him at the same time. “Wanna see if we can find a vending machine?”

She meets his gaze evenly. “I’ll pay for the drinks if you get food.”

The nurses look like they might be about to kill them. Levi doesn’t stop drinking his sweet tea, shaking slightly in his non-dominant hand. Annie holds the bloody tissue on her nose out of the way as she gulps down Dr. Pepper, washing away the taste of her second chocolate bar.

 When they’re discharged from the hospital for the second time in as many weeks they go to IHOP. Annie orders their new Dark Chocolate Peppermint Pancakes and an order of Eggnog Pancakes while only offering up “because I can” as a reason. She has to be persuaded not to order the Pumpkin Spice Pancakes as well. Levi orders a French Vanilla Coffee and has to order a second one when Annie drinks half of the first cup.

 

They start meeting for breakfast/lunch/dinner/it’s 3 am and I’m hungry at IHOP once a week.

By their third outing, Levi’s contact name is changed from “asshole” to “sonic ‘06” and Annie’s is changed to “coffee stealer.”

\----

Petra and Auruo are squabbling on the other side of the table. Their fights are rarely ever serious, only playful bickering. Gunther hides a smile as he sips at his coffee and Erd eagerly goads Auruo on.

He feels like he’s lying to them.

He puts his tea down, swirling the black liquid in his cup as Auruo and Petra quiet down.

“So I found Annie.”

The atmosphere change is immediate, all eyes on him as they process it. Annie. The female titan. The one that ended their last lives.

“Yeah?” Erd’s voice is detached, brow furrowed and lips pursed, staring down at the contents of his own coffee cup.

“Mhm.”

Auruo is seemingly torn, between anger and the forgiveness of this life, glancing between all of them, focusing more-so on Petra.

“So how do we feel about her?”

They’re all quiet for awhile, unable to put together enough to separate feelings of hatred to acceptance.

Gunther, surprisingly, is the one to break the silence.

“From what you’ve said… it was more like brainwashing for them, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

It does nothing to help the silence.

It’s awkward, and already he is trying to figure out how he’s going to hide his adventures with her from them when Erd lets out a long sigh and slumps back in his seat.

“New life, new her?”

“Maybe,” Petra’s voice is cautious, looking between all of them. “Maybe we give her a chance?”

Auruo looks uneasy but nods his consent. Gunther makes a ‘hm’ sound before Erd turns to Levi, a question on his tongue.

“How did you meet her, anyways.”

He takes a sip of his tea, letting the hot liquid burn his throat before placing it back down with a soft ‘clnk’

He meets their gazes and says, “I punched her in the face.”

“Levi!” Petra yells, slamming her hands down on the table as Erd throws his head back and laughs. Auruo grins at him with a cry of “nice!” and Gunther just sighs.

\----

It’s 4 am and snowing, lights of their favorite IHOP reflecting against the white flakes of bullshit on the ground. Annie, someone who he is convinced is secretly either the devil or Santa Claus, is spread out in a snowbank, making a snow angel in a thin jacket and ripped skinny jeans. He shivers just looking at them, or maybe it’s the freezing temperatures. One of the two.

He manages to drag her inside after another 5 minutes when he can no longer feel his fingers or his toes.

He tries not to stare when the snowflakes reflect the light before they melt in her hair.

 

She talks a lot, but only about certain things. There are days they have met when the only noise she has made towards him was a few non-committal grunts while they play on their phones, and then there are days where she has talked almost as much as Hanji can. In the end he’s not sure which days he prefers.

At times he thinks he prefers the days before they had met, when the only thing he had to look forward too were the coffee days with his squad and the soft embrace of his bed after work each day. Now he looks forward to her, to fist-fights and pancakes, and the soft mustache of whipped cream she gets whenever she snags his coffee from him-and downs half the thing in one go like some sort of animal-he looks forward to her invading his life.

He looks forward to getting a detailed list of what the hell is wrong with him.

\----

The bad thing about spending as much time together as they do is that their cycles sync up. Because instead of suffering at different times, the hell uterus in his body demands he do it alongside her.

Which leads to him dragging himself out of his nice warm bed to run out and get more snacks for her when she runs out; and to collapse in her apartment and re-watch all of her shitty Nicholas Cage movies she got from Reiner while complaining.

It’s a give and take relationship.

 

     _[text: coffee stealer]_ im dying

  _[text: coffee stealer]_ this is the end for me

 _[text: coffee stealer]_ its all going dark

 _[text: coffee stealer]_ there is no hope

   _[text: coffee stealer]_ take care of my pokemon

    _[text: sonic ‘06]_ did you run out of chocolate.

    _[text: coffee stealer]_ shut up levi im dying

   _[text: coffee stealer]_ OOOOOH THE PAINNNNN

   _[text: sonic ‘06]_ oh my god

 _[text: sonic ‘06]_ ill be over in 20 minutes

    _[text: coffee stealer]_ howd that one song go again

 _[text: coffee stealer]_ DEAR AGONNYYYYY

 

When he gets to her house she already has popcorn in the microwave, he can hear the menu screen for _Face Off_. She essentially tackles him as soon as the door shuts behind him, yanking the wal-mart bag out of his hand as she digs for what chocolate he got her.

Something else he will never get used to, is how much she cries. She cries, so so much. Not even out of sadness, sometimes she’ll see a cat that is too cute and she’ll just sob. It’s strange and, although crying normally annoys him, he doesn’t find he cares with her.

He does care when she’s sobbing on his shoulder because he bought her 3 bars of dark chocolate-her favorite-and getting her snot all over his jacket.

They watch _Face Off_ for the 3rd time that month and bitch the entire time, fighting over who gets the heating pad.

\----

He kisses her for the same reason he punched her almost a year ago: because he feels like it. He can taste the stupid pancakes she’s eating, can taste his coffee on her lips, can taste everything he’s wanted for too long to think about. When he pulls away he realizes he may have just made a stupidly big mistake, one that could fuck up this entire thing that they have, could ruin everything.

Annie’s face is as blank as it always is as she looks down at her pancakes and swipes a finger through the whipped cream, tapping it onto Levi’s nose.

“It’s about fucking time, I was starting to think I was going to have to go with Reiner’s suggestion of signaling you like a plane.”

She spreads her legs a bit while waggling her eyebrows at him before leaning in to kiss the whipped cream off his nose.

They’re too far away, he decides, table scrunched awkwardly in between them. So he gets up from his side and moves around sliding into the booth next to Annie.

“Am I clear for take-off?”

“I hate you.”

They meet in the middle this time.

He’s pretty sure he can hear the night staff hiding in the kitchen cheer.

 

They end their ‘date’ in Levi’s apartment simply because the heater is broken in Annie’s, pressed up against each other on the couch watching netflix using Levi’s neighbors account. It’s slightly painful where Annie’s shoulders are pressed up against the more fleshy parts of his body, but as the generic white girl screams in the horror film they’re watching he feels at ease. He’s still wearing his clothes from earlier, the only difference being that his jeans and binder are thrown over the back of the couch. It’s going to be annoying to get the whipped cream stain out of his shirt.

Annie had taken it upon herself to raid his closet, clothes dumped in a pile on his bedroom floor, wearing his hoodie and some basketball shorts she had found.

“You dumb bitch.” She mumbled, watching the Generic White Girl™ trip over nothing-maybe her boyfriend’s fragile ego?- while being chased by the killer.

Levi throws his arm over his eyes, shifting in such a way that one was uncovered to continue watching the movie, feeling his legs start to go numb from where Annie was laying on them.

“Who’s account is this again?”

“Eren. Some college kid brat next door.”

“Sounds like a fuckboy.”

“God he is.”

She muffles a snort in his chest, squirming on him to get comfortable again before yawning. They fall asleep like that, the screams of the horror movie playing in the background.


End file.
